As was the style at the time, the Catalan nationalist’s philosophy soon migrated to anarchism, and he brought his army experience to the Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación (MIL), whose direction-action credo entailed bank robberies branded as “expropriation.”

Puig Antich was caught in a police ambush that also claimed the life of a police officer — at least some of the bullets seemingly delivered by police friendly fire.

Spain soon did away with the discomfiting garrote; its very last executions were carried out by firing squad.

Salvador Puig Antich was the subject of a 2006 film, Salvador. (Here is a hostile anarchist review.)

The junior partner in the day’s twin killing, Heinz Ches, was himself the subject of a documentary, Nobody’s Death: The Enigma of Heinz Ches, exploring the weird near-total obscurity of the man who shared the headlines with Salvador Puig Antich. (A clip can be viewed here.)

@lawguy, Frank, and Sean: This is a political science accounting of fascism, not the popularized use of the term “fascism” for any form of violently repressive government. The words “oppressive” and “dictatorship” clearly describe Francoism; “fascist” is not particularly helpful, but it’s hard not to think of him as at least “semi-fascist” due to his ostensible nationalism.

“Although Franco and Spain under his rule adopted some trappings of fascism, he, and Spain under his rule, are not generally considered to be fascist by scholars of fascism;among the distinctions, fascism entails a revolutionary aim to transform society, where Franco and Franco’s Spain did not seek to do so, and, to the contrary, although authoritarian, were conservative and traditional. Stanley Payne, the preeminent scholar on fascism and Spain notes: ‘scarcely any of the serious historians and analysts of Franco consider the generalissimo to be a core fascist.’ According to historian Walter Laqueur ‘during the civil war, Spanish fascists were forced to subordinate their activities to the nationalist cause. At the helm were military leaders such as General Francisco Franco, who were conservatives in all essential respects. When the civil war ended, Franco was so deeply entrenched that the Falange stood no chance; in this strongly authoritarian regime, there was no room for political opposition. The fascists became junior partners in the government and, as such, they had to accept responsibility for the regime’s policy without being able to shape it substantially.'”

Franco was not a fascist in the common understanding of the word because he was not a leftest. He was a great defender of the innocent victims of Marxism. He was the liberator of Spain. If only the west had a hundred leaders like Franco today the world would be a happier place. Those executed by the Franco government suffered a JUST and well deserved death.